Yes, she can!

In Jharkhand, Anita Marande firmly told the Divisional Commissioner, “If children are given proper opportunities, we can do anything!” Any guesses as to where Anita is from? No, she is not from a plush, urban school.

Anita was 13, and comes from the Baikaria tribe. She lives with an old tribal person from a remote village of Jharkhand, India. Till a few years back, the 22 families living in the village did not even know that the empty structure that stood outside their village since 1972 was a primary school. No one attended it. There was not even a teacher assigned there.
Since the hamlet was poor, it was easy for the administration to forget that it existed. But with Anita around, the government had no choice but to sit up and take notice
What gave Anita the confidence to face the divisional commissioner? It was the three years of her being part of the children’s group initiated by SATHEE, a CRY supported NGO. Thirteen year old Anita with a spark, inescapable even to the most unobservant eye, became the undisputed leader. The non functioning school was discussed by the children’s group. 500 post cards about the non functional school were sent to the Divisional Commissioner and the district education officials. No response was received for two months – so Anita led a children’s rally to meet the DM and top education officials. This propelled the DM to take immediate action, assigning a teacher to the school.

The school teacher arrived, but he was not serious and was often drunk. This was not acceptable to the community, including the children. The children started keeping a daily diary which recorded the day’s proceedings in the school, including information about the teacher. They met the block education officials and shared the data from their daily diary with them. They received no response. They did not give up - they waited all day at the office of the officials. Finally at 3pm, the teacher was called. He arrived drunk. The officials were embarrassed and immediately suspended the teacher. Two new teachers were appointed.Anita supported the teachers by disseminating information to parents and students about exam dates, distribution of school books etc. She also reported child health problems to health workers and the village council. She influenced other children (specially working children) to join and remain in school.

The Baikaria children’s group meets every month to discuss issues like education quality, basic infrastructure at school, enrolment and retention issues and review data that they have recorded in their school daily diary. With the commitment of this group of youngsters, the Barakaira village school is functioning well and a majority of the children go to school. Mid day meals are provided to the tribal children. Drinking water and toilets still need to be addressed.

Anita became the leader of the Boarijore Gram Panchayat level children’s parliament which meets every quarter and monitors the functioning of nine primary schools. Data from the daily diaries of these schools are consolidated, reviewed and given to the block level education officials. The government officials give written receipts for the data received and are forced to address issues with the schools.

A16, preparing for her Class 10 exams, Anita's eyes sparkle as she dreams to do a teachers training course. Currently she is the leader of the district level children’s parliament, in addition to her rigorous studies, she continues to discuss education, health and child labour issues with other children, multitasking with an easy and efficacy difficult for most adults. She’s lived her words proving without doubt that “Children can turn the world upside down (in the right direction that is!)”

We (children) too have rights.

We (children) too have rights.


Where there are only 07 ICDS centres to cater 5000 huts from 5 pocket of slum in Sub Urban Mumbai and also the distance from the slum pockets to the nearest BMC School, it becomes really difficult to get a space and quality education as well as adequate facility for children like Chenya. Also where the situation of parents is such that there is no surety of even earning for the day due to which the children are bound to work and forget their dreams of becoming a Doctor/an Engineer.

Chenya is eleven from Banjartanda, Bharat Nagar Slum pocket of Vasi Naka in the city of Mumbai. A student of class 3rd of BMC School in the campus of National Chemical Fertilizer Colony travels 3 kms everyday on foot to reach the school. He lives with his mother, father and his elder brother. His parents earn money through working everyday as a labourer, which is not fixed even. His parents migrated 10 years back to Mumbai from a small village of Gulbarga in Karnataka in search of work. Chenya’s elder brother also works in a restaurant to support the family.

He has been drawing and participating in Inter School Competition for last two years and also been awarded with lot of prizes and medals. This year he has won 3 prizes in Inter School Competition. His teacher says that he is equally an intelligent boy and good at studies.

Looking at the socio-economic condition of his family, Chenya is able to draw, paint, study and dreaming of becoming an Engineer/doctor. Here the support extended by not only his parents but Chenya’s friends, Samta Mitra Mandal(SMM), a Child Rights and You(CRY), Mumbai supported urban initiative working in 3 pocket of slums in M ward of Mumbai. Chenya was identified and supported through the support centre run by SMM, which enabled him to realize his interests/potential in the area of drawing, painting as well as his studies. The centre also discussed his likings/disliking along with the problems and was able to discuss Chenya with his parents and extended every support to enrol in the BMC School.

Chenya likes playing cricket – Chenya says that when he is older, he would like to be a Doctor or an Engineer and support his family and other friends who are in need. He feels like there should be a ‘change’- of the ‘situation’, ‘the people’ and the “neglected Children and Childhood” because “we (children) too have rights”.

The View from Gadchiroli

We are in Chandrapur: Rediscovered tehsil headquarters, wannabe city.

The town-to-be sits leeringly at the edge of Gadchiroli, Vidharba’s beleaguered tribal district. We are here to join CRY’s team which is on an annual evaluation reporting visit with three ‘partners’, CRY-speak for activists and small NGOs that CRY helps to grow into fully-sledged NGO: Able to gather funds and resources for itself, able to plan and monitor the work they do. Able, above all, to channel government’s attention and resources to the area’s crying needs.

In Gadchiroli’s case, the incipient “issues” are poverty, malnutrition, morbidity, landlessness, no work, no schools, etcetera: Not surprisingly, the Naxals are here. They have been around for decades, rejecting the State’s ‘welfare’, organizing supporters to stand up in their rejection.

Dilip bhau recounts a story: Chichpura is a typical forest hamlet – a hundred or so families scratching a livelihood together in constant friction with the forest guards and officers. Dilip bhau’s team is trying valiantly to channel the trickle of our South Asian Superpower’s 8% growth rate to Chichpura.

They organize people to apply for land ownership under the Forest Dwellers Act, go door to door asking fathers and mothers to enroll their children in the area’s only school. They also tried to pull up the local ANM to conduct her compulsory fortnightly visit to immunize the village’s 24 newborns.

“She doesn’t want to go to Chichpura because there’s no road connecting the villages. She has been getting her salary even without immunizing anyone…” Dilipbhau’s pauses suggestively and no one in the room seems surprised.

Which is why an organization like CRY so vehemently goes the Rights way. Rights, as you may have guessed by now, are important for those living without them– the poor, not the rich. And the only body that can make rights happen are the government.

It may sound naive, foolhardy or simply a waste of resources, but there are actually no better option than to try and fix all that is wrong with this parliamentary democracy of ours. So instead of writing off the entire government with cursory indictments of failure, Dilipbhau and 200 others like him break down the seemingly unsurmountable problem into bite-size pieces: No healthcare? Find out why the health center is not working. No education? Get a school going by petitioning the district Education officials.

In an area like Gadchiroli, where the people have for long felt the brunt of government neglect of basic services, this approach comes with a can-do attitude towards resolution. Gadchiroli is a district that has seen protest for long, witness the Adivasis protest against the proposed dams at Hemalkasa in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra in the 1980s (shown in the picture. But since protests, whether non-violent ones or the recent violent ones, have not helped, connecting the government's services to each village, one village at a time, seems to be the slow but steady and above all persistent approach.

Dilipbhau certainly believes so. And so does CRY, who supports small partners like Dilipbhau with much needed resources and expertise.

And thus it comes about that the very process of finding out, asking questions, rebuffing offences, meeting, pulling collectives together, the villagers find themselves a lot more empowered. Sure, no one builds them a school overnight or donates food and medicines, but what gradually grows is a sense of ownership - of the resources which the government owes the children.